Waiting for the crisis to pass, our thoughts go out to friends and loved-ones who also shelter in place. Old friends pass away, people we loved and admired. Immobilized for the time being, we can revisit destinations, near and far. join me in celebrating the joys of Quaranteam travel, the hope that these diversions might inspire us to value things we had taken for granted, to draw strength, wisdom and compassion from deeper engagements with nature.
Gory Brook Meadow near Phillipse Mill. Sleepy Hollow, New York. July 11, 2016
(Image and text were featured in the exhibition James McElhinney. Discover the Hudson Anew, curated by Laura Vookles. Hudson River Museum. Yonkers, New York. September 13, 2019 to February 16, 2020. Published also as a limited-edition in Hudson Highlands. North River Suite Volume One. Needlewatcher Editions. New York. 2018)
Through the village of Sleepy Hollow, just north of Tarrytown flows the Pocantico River, alternately known as Gory Brook—a tributary of the Hudson that was harnessed for hydropower by a grist-mill fed by a large pond, bordered on the west by a long, timber-built dam undergirding a narrow bridge with a wooden deck. Legend, or more correctly, the imagination of Washington Irving tells us that Yankee schoolmaster Ichabod Crane, besotted with a local girl, was pursued across this bridge and driven out of town by a Headless Horseman.
The mill and the land upon which it stands belonged to the Philipse family. Prior to the Revolutionary War they held much of Westchester County as a hereditary estate. As loyalists during the conflict, there would be no place for them in the new independent republic. Nearby Sleepy Hollow Cemetery provides eternal rest to notables such as Andrew Carnegie, Walter Chrysler, Jasper Cropsey, Samuel Gompers, Washington Irving, and Carl Schurz.
Phillipse Mill, Sleepy Hollow. Westchester County. New York. July 11, 2016
The site today is a National Historic Landmark accessible through the visitor center and gift-shop of Philipse Manor, from which bus tours depart for Kykuit, the former estate of the late New York governor and former U.S. Vice-President Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller. The grounds include a remarkable sculpture-gardenwhile the house contains an important collection of modern art.
On July 15, 2016, I drove upriver with a wonderful painter, a friend for nearly half a century. Eric Holzman had grown up in Yonkers and thus was intimate with the river-towns opposite the Palisades, and upriver along the shores of the Tappan Zee. Adjusting his French easel, Ric set out four or five canvases along a grassy path, behind a screen of wetland plants along the creek. Otherworldly vine-strangled trees across the creek held him enthralled. Walking through a stand of trees, I set up at the far end of a small field. We took breaks, exchanged critiques. It was a productive day for us both. Such days are forever.
(A preview of SKETCHBOOK TRAVELER by James L. McElhinney (c) 2020. Schiffer Publishing).
Copyright James Lancel McElhinney (c) 2020 Texts and images may be reproduced (with proper citation) by permission of the author. To enquire, send a request to editions@needlewatcher.com